Of the 29 public hospitals in Croatia that have a contracted abortion service with the HZZO on request, in six of them, no gynecologist wants to do so because they have a conscience appeal, writes Večernji list. Clinical Hospital Sveti Duh in Zagreb, General County Hospital Vinkovci, OŽB Našice, and OŽB Požega and General Hospitals in Virovitica and Nova Gradiška are institutions whose gynecologists employed there have called to conscience and do not want to perform abortions at the request of women.
In the Požega hospital, along with gynecologists and all five anesthesiologists, they also called for conscience and do not perform abortions. Out of a total of 359 hospital gynecologists in Croatia, 164 gynecologists agree to work in public hospitals at the request of a woman by the legally regulated and legal procedure of abortion, and 195 refuse to do so.
Due to his conscientious objection, 38 out of a total of 698 specialists in anesthesiology, resuscitation, and intensive care, as many as work in Croatian hospitals, refuse to perform abortions, according to data from the Digital Atlas of Medicine of the Croatian Medical Chamber. Some nurses and midwives and even pharmacists in pharmacies also called for a conscience appeal, but we did not find out exactly how many.
There is no conscience appeal in some hospitals
The conscientious objection in an individual hospital is regulated by the employee writing a statement invoking the right to conscientious objection and delivering it to the employer, such as the personnel or legal service, the director’s office or the hospital board, and in some cases appeals are only recorded at the gynecology department.
There is no uniform practice. There are no or almost no appeals of conscience in hospitals in Rijeka, Karlovac, Ogulin, Sisak, Koprivnica, Pakrac, Knin, Vukovar, Pula and Čakovec.
All hospitals whose doctors invoked conscience for abortion have hired doctors from another institution, to whom they then pay extra or have contracts with the health institution where the procedure is performed. Thus, they have fulfilled the legal obligation that they must ensure legal and accessible abortion, writes the journalist of Večernji list Romana Kovačević Barišić.
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